Crossroads

America is at a crossroads. We must face as many fundamental and fateful decisions as we have in more than a century.

What kind of country are we? What kind of government should we have – and how much should it do for us? What is the nature of our relationship to our government, and to each other? What is America’s role in the world?

There’s a lot of buying and selling that goes on in the free market. Yet the one thing the free market can’t seem to sell these days is itself.

As demonstrated dramatically in the odd and chaotic “Occupy” movement of a few years ago, a lot of folks just aren’t buying the benefits of capitalism these days. Young people in particular are a tough sell – even as they hold a Starbucks latte in one hand while they tweet their anti-capitalist rage on their smartphone. No irony there.

Income taxes are one aspect of federal law every American has dealt with personally.

The topic was no doubt on the minds of voters in November as they chose the candidate who pledged to overhaul the U.S. tax code – which many rightly criticize as being needlessly complex, difficult to administer and unjust in how it rewards and punishes economic behaviors.

Have you ever thought about how absolutely crucial certain constitutional provisions are to your own life?

We often take freedom of speech and religion for granted, though they are always under assault. And everyone knows, by now, our constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, self-incrimination and more.

Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks were actual assaults on our homeland, acts of war in which thousands of people died.

But while nothing can hold a candle to the physical devastation wrought by enemy bombs and hijacked airliners, the fact is we are under cyberattack every day in this country – in fact, by some estimates, as many as 500,000 times each day, at a potential cost of $2 trillion by the year 2019.

We should be amazed at the rise of Bernie Sanders. We should also be alarmed.

A plug on Amazon.com for his book ‘Our Revolution’ recalls that the presidential candidate was “just an Independent senator from a small state with little name recognition. His campaign had no money, no political organization, and it was taking on the entire Democratic Party establishment.”